Wine-red socks with a grey suit

This series is a progression in socks, from the most conservative to the most flamboyant colour combinations.

It is important to start slowly and build to greater sophistication. Colour is tricky; so much can go wrong in a shade. Buy one or two pairs in a new colour and try them with different suits and shoes, until you feel you know exactly how they fit into your wardrobe.

As I mentioned in my last post, the first colours I think you should consider after self hose (same colour as the trousers) are deep green and deep red. This applies to both blue and grey suits.

The only exception is charcoal, which is hard to wear well with any coloured sock other than possibly purple. I’ve written before that charcoal is the only colour of trouser I would not wear with brown shoes. It is the same reasoning: brown shoes are a colour where black ones are not.

In the picture deep-red socks are worn with grey flannel trousers and mid-brown shoes. The thing to note is that the colours of all three are deep enough to work together: a paler brown in the split-toe shoe or a very pale flannel would have been less suited. Looking at it now, I may even have preferred a slightly darker brown shoe – you don’t want the red sock to reflect the shoe but harmonise with it, and this Gaziano & Girling has a red aspect to it.

Hey Tobias. It might depend on what we mean by ‘dark’ grey. If we call that charcoal, which is more accurate and is what I mean by it, then yes you only want very dark shoes with it. But by far the most versatile pair of flannels is mid-grey. What would normally be called plain grey. I hope that helps